Tag Archives: French Artists

The remarkable Paul Gauguin was born on the 7th June in the year of 1848. He was a specialist when it came to the style of Post-Impressionist painting. He was very much interested in performing various experiments with his artistic style and that brought amazing outputs for the world to see. He also used to experiment with colors and led him to develop a modern style of art. The paintings reflected his own subjects which he wished to talk about. His main themes included the patristic side of the world and primitivism. Another strong contribution of his to the universe of art was his work with wood in the form engravings and cuts.

Life

Born in the city of Paris, Gauguin belonged to a hardworking French family. His father was a journalist. The family decided to migrate towards Peru in the year 1851 during a tough political time. During that fateful journey, his father died. Gauguin was only a three year old when this sad incident happened in his life. The remaining family lived in Peru for a period of four years and after that they returned back to France.

Degas And His Early Life

Edgar Degas was a French artist from the mid 19th and early 20th century, he is notable for having an artistic style that concentrated chiefly on female forms; namely, dancers and other similar subjects. He was born on the 19th of July, 1834, in the city of Paris, France. He was the son of a moderately well to do banker; Augustin De Gas and had four siblings in which he was the eldest. Degas was educated at an elite school in Paris by the name of Lycee Louis-le-Grand when he was eleven years old. By age thirteen, Degas’s mother died and the remainder of his youth was spent with his father and grandfather, who influenced him deeply.

This was also the time when Degas began showing aptitude as an artist, paintings had always held a certain attraction for him and he was gifted at copying some of the remarkable works of the era. Upon graduating, Degas dedicated one of his rooms to art and created an artist’s studio, he even registered himself as a copyist at the Louvre Museum.

Degas’s father willed him to study law and the obedient youth dutifully enrolled at the University of Paris for a law degree, but it was not to be. Barely two years later, Degas had managed to get admission at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts after being recommended by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingress, a man whom Degas had admired for some time. Ingress convinced Degas that he had great potential in art, and so he made his choice.

Birth and Early Life:

Eugene Delacroix was a French artist from the mid 19th century, he was born on April 26, 1798. Delacroix spent much of his childhood in the French commune of Saint-Maurice Val-de-Marne near the city of Paris. Eugene Delacroix’s father is disputed since Charles Delacroix is believed to have been infertile at the time of Eugene’s conception, and the boy resembled a friend of the family; Talleyrand. Eugene Delacroix’s childhood was fraught with many difficulties; chiefly among them were the deaths of his mother and father when Eugene was only 16 years old.

He was subsequently raised by Talleyrand and sent to the Lycee Louis-le-Grand where he got his early education. Delacroix showed great aptitude for drawing and an inherent interest in the arts from early in his career and he was awarded numerous honors while he was still a student, his professional education was completed at the Lycee Pierre Corneille. Some of his earliest works include a church commissioned painting called “The Virgin of the Harvest” which was completed in 1819, and another interpretation called “The Virgin of the Sacred Heart” which was completed in 1821.

Artistic Style:

Claude Monet was a French artist often credited as the founder of the impressionist painting genre. Monet was one of the foremost artists of his generation, and his first masterpiece titled “Impression, Sunrise” is often considered to be one of the most revolutionary works of its kind. Claude Monet was born in France, in the city of Paris, on November 14th 1840.

Monet’s Early Life In Paris

Monet’s infant years were spent in Paris. He was the second son of Adolphe and Louise Monet who were Parisians. He was baptised as Oscar Claude but his parents would call him only Oscar. Monet was born in a catholic family but he later embraced atheism. Monet’s family moved to Normandy in 1845 where his father had managed to set up a moderately successful grocery business, while his mother would go on to train as a singer. Claude was expected to join in on his father’s grocery business when he got older and thus help in expanding it, but Claude had cherished a deep passion for the arts since his early childhood. He really wanted to become a painter and showed great potential. Monet was thus admitted to the Le Havre secondary school for elementary studies in arts, needless to say he was an excellent student. Monet took to painting as a hobby, and in his school days he was forever coming up with charcoal caricatures and paintings that he would then sell in the market for around twenty francs.